LJWorld.com

Every school has rules governing teacher behavior. Every state has laws against child abuse, and many specifically outlaw teachers taking sexual liberties with students. Every district has administrators who watch out for sexual misconduct by teachers.

Yet people like Chad Maughan stay in the classroom.

Maughan got in trouble twice for viewing pornography at schools in Washington state but was allowed to keep teaching. Within two years, he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl in his school.

Legal loopholes, fear of lawsuits and inattention all have weakened the safeguards that are supposed to protect children in school. The system fails hundreds of kids each year, an AP investigation found.

Efforts hampered

State efforts to strengthen laws against sex abuse by teachers have run into opposition from school boards and teachers unions. In Congress, a measure that would train investigators and create a national registry of offenders hasn't even gotten a hearing.

"Instead of ignoring it or fighting it, why don't you get ahead of it?" says Ted Thompson, executive director of the National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children.

An Associated Press investigation identified 2,570 cases from 2001 to 2005 in which teachers were punished or removed from the classroom for sexual misconduct. Allegations ranged from fondling to rape. Reporters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia gathered the cases from state agencies with responsibility for teacher licensing.

Various methods

States vary widely on how many teachers they discipline and how rigorously, the investigation showed. That reflects the patchwork nature of the laws and rules that aim to protect schoolchildren. Each state takes its own approach to background checks, fingerprinting and reporting abuse.

While states have taken halting steps toward accountability in recent years after decades of widespread neglect, there are still many gaps.

Some states check fingerprints against records only in their own states, not the FBI databases, so they miss offenders from other states. Others only check for violations when teachers are newly hired, missing veteran teachers who have run afoul of the law since they were first hired.

Sharing information

School systems also have made an attempt at weeding out wrongdoers. For the past 20 years, educators have shared information with other states about teachers who've run into administrative trouble.

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification created the list, and Roy Einreinhofer, its executive director, says protecting children is one of the group's top goals.

But the list has its flaws.

It only provides identifying information such as names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, nothing describing a teacher's past problems, leaving it up to a state agency or a hiring school district to dig deeper. Also, the list is not publicly available.

Maughan's case

Similar piecemeal efforts have often run into resistance, from lawmakers reluctant to tackle the subject, from teacher unions concerned with privacy and due process, and from school boards worried about court fights.

In Washington state, Maughan's case led to a law that clarified the definition of sexual misconduct and required school districts to share information.

Maughan had been suspended from one job for looking at pornography on school computers, but the district said only that he had used "poor judgment." At the second job, he was reprimanded for viewing pornography, and told administrators he had an addiction and was getting counseling.

In 2005, school employees found a paper bag containing a 14-year-old girl's red lace underwear and a sexually explicit note from her to Maughan. The teacher pleaded guilty to rape.

State Sen. Don Benton, who fought for the law that followed the arrest, said "we had tremendous resistance from the teachers union when it came to personnel files.

"We have to tell school districts, 'Look, you have a duty and a responsibility. As parents, we are entrusting you with our children to take extra steps to ensure that the people you hire are safe.'"

Report ignored

Advocates argue what's needed is a coordinated national approach. But there has been virtually no momentum there.

A report ordered by Congress and released in 2004 examined previous studies and surveys of teacher sexual misconduct and sent a troubling message. It estimated that some 4.5 million students out of 50 million in American public schools "are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade."

But that report was largely ignored.

This year, U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, a Florida Republican, proposed legislation to create a national public registry of convicted offenders in schools, better training of investigators, and a national hot line for reports of sexual abuse in school.

It still hasn't received a hearing.

"It clearly is a problem, and it appears to be growing," Putnam says, dismayed by the lack of concern. "You'd think the teachers association, the school boards, the principals - you'd think all of them would be on board to protect children."

'We have a problem'

It often takes scandals to inspire changes. But districts and lawmakers shouldn't wait, advocates say.

The most powerful tool for change is money, says Thompson with the national child abuse prevention group.

That means dropping statutes of limitations that serve as barriers to lawsuits for all childhood sex abuse, he argues. Nothing motivates institutions more than the threat of paying out a big settlement.

Also, he says, it's the right thing to do: "Should somebody who raped a child be free and clear because the clock ticked?"

The nation needs to change its attitude toward teacher sexual misconduct, and child abuse overall, much in the way it changed its perspective about drunken driving in the last 25 years, Thompson says.

"Societally, we have a problem," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California attorney who has worked on teacher sexual abuse cases for three decades. "Our inability to think that kids might be in danger, our inability to think that the nicest teacher on the block might be an offender - those things keep us uneducated. I'm passionate that people wake up."